Some of you who read voodooextreme.com might have noticed the ‘Ask Brad’ column that was recently added. Well, I was thinking, if there’s an interest, of doing something similar here as well.

How it works is this: people send in emails, asking me questions. I sift through them, pick out a few every week or so, and then answer them. I was thinking of doing both columns, in that different people read that site as well as this one (although I’m sure there’s overlap).

I am more interested in answering certain questions than others, though. In other words, I have neither the time nor the inclination to compete with Absor I’m not looking for EverQuest current event questions, or why a certain item was changed or has certain stats, or whether a quest works or not, or why was ‘taunt’ changed recently, or to engage in a big debate over the precise rule set of Sullon Zek vs. Tallon Zek.

That’s what this board in general is for, and we already have a working feedback loop in place.

Rather, I’d be interested in answering more broad questions. Questions about game design in general, or why certain decisions were made in creating EverQuest. Or even questions about some of our other announced products, and how they might be similar or different to EverQuest. Or questions about our company in general, our philosophies, what we do every day, how games are developed... or even, 'Brad, who the heck are you anyway?'

Now, I’m not at all certain how many people are interested in this sort of thing, but heck, let’s give it a try. Send your emails directly to me, but make sure they have ASK BRAD in the beginning of the subject, or they’ll slip through my email filter. Then every week or so I’ll reply to as many as I can with a public post in this forum (btw, when you send an email in, if you don’t want your name shown, please make sure you let me know).

And please try to adhere to the themes and topics I’ve described. I’ll have to ignore everything else (and, of course, that includes flames and the like – please be nice to me ).

My email: bmcquaid@station.sony.com

I wanted to get my first ‘Ask Brad’ up right away so you can see what sort of questions I’m inclined to answer. Here they are, and again, if you find these interesting, please let me know.

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Hey Brad!

With an RP server being discussed, I've been thinking about a bard's role on the server. Something a lot of us bards have always wanted to do has been to actually play instruments. Put in notes, come out with a song to accompany the text lyrics or whatever we have created. I was wondering if this was a possibility in the future, like being able to create a song macro in-game with the instrument of your choice, or even just being able to sit down at set instruments available in the guilds and be able to play. I think this would add a lot to the role playing bard's experience.

I think it’s a great idea, and we’ve definitely talked about similar bardic features. But something as in-depth as you describe would take quite a bit of time and you probably won’t see similar features for a long while, and probably not in the present incarnation of EQ.

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Just coupla quick queries:

What exactly made the design team decide to make an expansion based on a moon rather than something a bit "closer to home", such as an underworld of sorts?

Well, we often sit in a room and just brainstorm on stuff, and some crazy people came up with the moon concept, which we then tossed around for a while… and it turned out many of us thought it was a very cool idea. It gives us more room to be creative in making both outdoor and indoor zones then, say, an underworld.

Also, will the mobs in the new expansion see significant difficulty "boosts" akin to what we saw in Kunark and later Velious (that is to say, a lvl 45 Kunark mob is a fair chunk more challenging than a lvl 45 old-world mob and a lvl 45 Velious mob seems scaled up from even Kunark)?

I don’t think you’ll see boosts in difficulty of the majority of the zones. Because Luclin is more akin to a ‘Kunark’ style expansion (as opposed to a ‘Velious’), it will contain content for levels 1-60. And while I’m sure they’ll be some nasty high level zones, most of the content will be similar in difficulty to the zones you find in Kunark.

Mordac

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Hi, Brad.... I figure out of the ten billion e-mails you're receiving today, I might as well do my part to fill your inbox.

Anyway....

Aside from being a sporadic EverQuest player, I'm also a tremendous fan of Star Wars: Galaxies and Sovereign. How much inter-team teamwork goes on at Verant? Is it just occasional chit-chat between friends? Do design team members have official meetings with each other to share ideas? Or do programmers regularly share their work with the other teams so that all can benefit from their work?

There’s actually quite a bit of collaboration between the teams, and we encourage it as much as possible. Quite a bit of code that needs to be developed for an MMOG is sharable (for example, the low level network code). Also, a lot of neat ideas and advice are shared as well. A great example is ‘Radial Flora’ (the cool bushes and shrubbery you see in some screenshots), which was developed by the Planetside team. Now it’s in Luclin and Star Wars: Galaxies too, even though all three games use different graphics engines.

Also, I've read about future plans for tier-pricing for subscribers to multiple SOE games. Are you considering discounts for families who subscribe multiple times to the same game, as well? I know a lot of people that would love to see this happen.

While we are tossing around the idea of pricing models for our future suite of MMOG titles, it’s still too early to go into details or to set anything in stone.

Take care,

Barry

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I'm curious as to why the zone sizes in Luclin are going to be "on average smaller then the Kunark zones" which you thought were too big in general? Was this because each zone takes a long time to design and make, or were there other subtle reasons for this planned downsizing in zones (eg. a dev got tired running to Karnors from the rings every day hehe)

No, it’s really an attempt to dial in on the optimum outdoor zone size for EverQuest in general. I think we’ve made some zones too big, and some too small. It’s really quite a balancing act: one doesn’t want too large of a zone, because then travel becomes tedious. But then too small of a zone, and people are crowded, competing over spawns and such. At this point the outdoor zone we’re probably most happy with is the Lake of Ill Omen, which is, to an extent, being used as a model for Luclin and any other future outdoor zones.

Also, as I understand it you built the EQ engine from the ground up, but are new zones really that tough to implement... do you have some sort of 'zone creator' where you could feasably create zones with random land (hills, rivers, trees) and then build upon that, or is every little thing done by hand? Thanks in advance if you answer this multi-part question...

All EQ zones, outdoor and indoor, are created by hand using both commercial and in-house tools and programs. And while it does take a while to create a zone, it’s a sacrifice we are willing to make, because the end result is a huge, hand-crafted world. Each zone hopefully has a personality and lots of visually unique content and features which we believe makes the world of Norrath all the more immersive.

-Miriamele Presbyter . Brell Serilis

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I would like to know, since EverQuest has been out for quite a while and with 2 expansions already, if you knew then what you do know about the game and game mechanics if you would have done classes different. Would you have combined some classes, not had some, or had different classes. If so, what would those classes be like.

Thanks,

Rick Grosskopf

I think we would, in 20/20 hindsight, indeed make the classes a bit different. Personally, I think we’ve homogenized the classes too much over the years. Also, I would have liked to see more archetypical group roles defined. In other words, you currently have far fewer roles (tank, healer, mezzer, etc.) than you have classes. This can be problematic, because at the higher end of the game and in large groups, players want the very best class at those roles, and sometimes the more flexible or hybrid classes are deemed less desirable. Were there, however, more roles that were important in high-level groups, I don’t think this would happen as often.

But, obviously, given where we’re at now, we can only make minor tweaks to address this, and we have no plans to radically overhaul the entire class and combat systems.

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What kind of cool stuff do you have in your office (posters, toys, etc)?

-Kevin

Somewhere amidst the mess that is my office, you’d find EverQuest posters and oversized boxes, posters and models of exotic sports cars, a statue of the Mighty Thor, a Namco Assault coinop arcade game, lots of M:TG cards, and some chairs, a desk, computer, TV, and couch

Thanks everyone for your emails,

-Brad

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I recall that when EverQuest was released, it was blamed by other developers for delaying their games. The designers spent their time playing EQ instead of working on games, hence the delays.

You must find that amusing (and gratifying, but I'm going for the amusing angle).

So, what keeps you from working? I'm hoping you don't say EverQuest, but as an addict myself I'll certainly understand if you do.

Sylvius (the Mad)
Roguish Rogue
Sullon Zek

I just can’t seem to get sick of Age of Kings: The Conquerors… I play it and play it. We’re also playing a bit of Tribes 2 around the office – it’s a lot of fun, especially using Sidewinder GameVoice. I also really enjoy car racing games, both in the arcade and on consoles.

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Here's a question that's been kinda bugging me about the forthcoming expansion. Now, when we saw Kunark released, and Velious, the new technology wasn't backwards compatible, so to speak. Trees don't move and sway in Antonica, for instance.

From looking at the screenshots of Luclin so far, I'd have to say it looks great (yah curved surfaces!). Now, my question is, will the revamp extend to the old world as well? Will I get to see grass and such sway in Greater Faydark? Since you totally redid the engine, I hope that this is true. It would be very dissapointing to go between Velious/Kunark/Old World and what them slowly seem to "deteriorate". Please, please, PLEASE don't let that be the case. From what I understand, the process would work something like this:

You have a set of files that denote zone information. One is a "map" of the zone, one contains spawn info, and one contains sounds/images. This may not be the way it is, i'm just theorizing. Now, depending on which engine the client is using (Luclin/non-luclin) the information would be used differently to build the zone. You could even have an extra file for each zone containing the extra info for the improved graphics and what not right? The non-luclin engine would ignore it, but the luclin engine would use it to build a graphically better zone.

Ok, I guess I've rambled enough.

PS: please let the graphics changes be global!

Lowkey
Wizard of Mithaniel Marr

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as just running the old zones in the new engine. To really take advantage of the Luclin engine, we’d have to re-do the older zones, which would take almost as long as it did originally to create them. So, at this point, we don’t have any plans to revamp the old zones and instead are focusing on adding new content.

That said, we do hope to get a speed (framerate) increase when running some of the older zones because of the better rendering and visibility/culling technology we are putting into the Luclin engine.

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Hello Brad,

My question for your column:

What is your Vision™ for EverQuest's future? Will you keep adding content and otherwise improving the current EverQuest, or will it be replaced by a completely new game?

Regards,
Ralph P van der Krabben
The Netherlands

Well, one of the great things about being acquired by Sony Online is we have plenty of resources to devote to all sorts of projects. Right now, EverQuest continues to do extremely well, performing well beyond even our wildest dreams. So we believe the game has a long and healthy future ahead of it, and have committed very large and talented Live/Expansion teams to it.

Will there be other EverQuest games? Honestly, it’s too early to talk about anything like that, but I will say we’d be pretty foolish to not be planning for the future, both short and long term.

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Greetings Brad. Few questions for you. First of all I’d like to congratulate you and all those involved with you for bringing such a wonderful fantasy world to the public. I must say you gotta be proud. I can only imagine. Anyhow. When the idea for EverQuest first came up, did any of you ever imagine what it would evolve into, and how many peoples Real Life you were going to affect? I mean do you have any idea how many addicts there are out here? I know I am, and for the last two years. I have been totally swept away in this mysterious world full of adventures with friends. It has been a hell of a journey for me and I look forward to the future.

Honestly, no. We had NO idea the game would ever become this popular. I remember sitting down with John Smedley, running the numbers, and figuring if we could just get 70,000 people to play for about 4 months on average, the game might pay for itself. At the time people were very skeptical of MMOGs, and many thought UO was just a fluke. It was quite a battle, both getting the game finished as well as getting the support we needed to finish it (a huge thanks to John Smedley, Executive Producer on the original project, who’s original idea it was to do an online RPG and who then worked very hard to keep the project alive. Also, another huge thank you to Kelly Flock, then President of 989 Studios, for agreeing to fund the game and see it to completion. Without John and Kelly, there’d simply be no EverQuest).

Now, looking back, I’m still blown away. 400,000 active players… and more than 60% of everyone who ever bought the game still subscribing… an entire company (Verant) formed by its success and now able to pursue other massively multiplayer games… Verant acquired by SOE, putting it financially in a position to lead this new and emerging genre. Thanks big time to everyone who’s worked on the game, supported the game, and a special thanks to all of you players, without whom Norrath would merely be an empty shell.

One other question. Ever think about adding an expansion as lvl 50 to 60 world only? I mean, that would give those "noobs" another incentive to make it to the top. I remember in Old world, all I could think about was being old enough to go into the Planes. Not to mention if it was an entire continent, dedicated to the high end game, well us high lvl folks aren’t going to complain about not seeing **** is inspecting your equipment, every time we walk into town for some food or cash. Would really be neat to have an entire world for the sole community of the high end game. Just an idea. Any thoughts on this?

Sincerely ,
Gaani Deadslayer <--60th High Priest of Tarew Marr--->

Well, Velious was pretty much targeted at higher level players. Luclin will be more similar to Kunark, with zones for levels 1-60. But after that? You never know, but I will say this: they’ll be a lot of high-level players by then and we’d better have a plan to keep them happy

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One thing that strikes a lot of people as very annoying in most (all?) MMORPGs is the downtime. It's just not fun, and it is annoying to be paying money to do nothing. Contrast this to a traditional paper and dice RPG...imagine EQ as a paper and dice RPG and image a party in Freeport trying to get to Permafrost. They would tell the GM they are going, and give their route, and tell the GM that they are in a hurry, so are avoiding wandering monsters. The GM would roll some dice, and tell them "you trip was uneventful for the first day, but while crossing West Karana, you stumbled into a Hill Giant unexpectedly, and he attacks you!". A few minutes real time would be spent dispatching the Hill Giant, then they would continue, the GM would roll some dice, and tell them they are in Permafrost. Elapsed real time, 5 or 10 minutes. If they needed healing after the HG fight, they would tell the GM "we rest here until the Warrior is healed up to 90%", and the GM would roll some dice to see if they were surprised by any wanderers, and if not, would tell them "The Warrior is healed".

In an MMORPG, however, you can't take these shortcuts, because there are thousands of other players in the world. Even though most of them are not involved in what my party is doing, it is necessary that we remain synchronized with the world's timeline. So, a fight where the party takes a lot of damage has to have downtime...and that downtime actually has to be endured, to keep the party's time synchronized with all the other player's times.

Can an MMORPG capture the continuous excitement of a paper and dice game, while still allowing thousands of people into one world?

--Tim Smith

Ah, the big ‘downtime’ question that’s in a sense plaguing both present and future MMOGs.

It’s a pretty tough question to answer, and an even tougher problem to solve. You’re absolutely right that it’s not an issue for paper and dice games because they’re neither massively multiplayer nor persistent. The GM can alter the rate at which time passes for his group of players without worrying about screwing things up for thousands of others.

I’ll discuss briefly two types of downtime and my feelings regarding them:

1. Downtime between battles. It’s important. People do need a break between fighting – it’s a time to grab a drink from the fridge, or use the restroom. It’s also a time for socializing and discussing tactics for the next battle. But it can also be boring, and it can definitely take too long. I’ve heard that some players have finished Robert Jordan novels, reading only during downtime. So, it’s really a balancing act, and I think we probably have a bit too much of this sort of downtime, but it’s not something easily solved or tweaked because there are so many factors related to balance that rely on mana and hit point regeneration rates, etc.

2. Downtime traveling between areas of interest. This is also a tough one. While most players want a huge world to explore and the distance between to regions to be measurable and significant, it also gets pretty old traveling from one point to another, over and over again. For example, Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom was very exciting ONCE, but were he to have to do it repeatedly, it would most likely become less and less interesting. I don’t think the solution, however, is to simply shrink the world by increasing travel speeds or making teleportation more accessible. Rather, the solution, at least long term, is to provide a more dynamic world that IS interesting and different even though you are traveling through the same area again. In other words, the travel itself ought to be as much of an adventure and about playing the game as what you do when you arrive at your destination.

So, to answer your final question there: yes and no. Yes, I think MMOGs will get better and better at making downtime less frustrating and travel much more interesting. But I also think it would be unwise to really pursue ‘no downtime’ because of how important it is to both community building as well as to creating truly virtual worlds.

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I've been a gamer since I was about 3 years old when I was playing Castle Wolfenstein on my old Commodore 64(the 2D one . I've gone through several games since then and one thing has always fascinated me, and that was HOW do these people make these games.

I’ve been a gamer since I played Ultima 2 on an Apple 2e. And I had the original Castle Wolfenstein on my Atari 800XL. Ah, the good old days

This Summer I'm headed to UT allas to major in Computer Science, I know enough C++ to get myself around, but need formal instruction on how to think when programming. I was wondering what compiler and what not ya'll used? Even what made you do Direct X instead of OpenGL and what not Quake 3 followed, and Quake 2 before it.

-Aaron
aka Cardinl Soulwarden
57th Templar of Tunare
Relentless Asecension
Morell-Thule

We use Visual C++ almost entirely for all of our development. As for Direct X vs. OpenGL, the latter wasn’t really an option when we were originally programming the game between 1996 and 1998. Actually, the big debate was whether to use Direct X or Glide (or both). Interestingly, the EverQuest engine was originally a software renderer. Then we made the decision to also support hardware (our target card was the Voodoo 1). So we made a Glide version, and then later decided to go hardware only. In the end, we converted the engine such that it would also support Direct X. Supporting OpenGL could have been a decision we made later, but it turns out Direct X is mature enough now that there’d really be no advantages to supporting it.

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Hello! I was studying the map that comes with EverQuest, and I've noticed many areas that don't seem to exist. I looked at the "In Development" letter and was excited to see that the Stonebrunt Mountains on the map is planned to be added. Are you guys still actively improving the "Old World" just as much as you're working to create new, exciting lands (Luclin)? Are more zones coming? And do I have any hope of seeing The Loping Plains or the Hills of Shade appear in my homeland of Faydwer?

Faedia, Veeshan

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I was wondering if you guys ever plan on finishing off the original EverQuest continents (zone wise), I think it would bring more life back to the old world having more zones come online. Some of the places mentioned on the game maps sound kind of interesting, and I for one would like to see things like the Dead Hills, Lake Nerriuss and The Northlands, or even the Rujarkian Hills and Lifire River of Antonica. Is there any thought or future plans of ever bringing live the original intended parts of Norrath that was cut out for specific reasons?

--- Riachi Swiftheart ---
42nd Barbarian Rogue

(Since you both pretty much asked the same question, I decided to post both of your emails)

The short answer is Yes. We’d love to eventually see every nook and cranny of Norrath accessible. And I think, slowly but surely, you’ll see us get there. In addition to major Expansions (which have always added new areas), we are also committed to launching at least 2 new and free zones each year, and they’ll almost always be parts of the Old World. We’re not sure yet which region we’ll do after the Stonebrunt Mountains, but we’ll announce it when we do. Adding Paineel, the Warrens, and the Stonebrunt Mountains came from a desire to significantly expand Odus (let’s face it – the island was just too small). You could see new zones in Odus, Antonica, or Faydwer in the future, however.

Thanks for all the emails,

-Brad

Thanks, and keep sending those great questions.